Easter cakes and/or Eucharist: typology of Orthodox Christians participating in the blessing of Easter food

Abstract

The article discusses the results of a study on the inclusion/non-inclusion of the Orthodox Christians in the rituals related to the preparation for Easter, the key Orthodox holiday.The author conducted a cluster analysis of the data of the project «Holy Saturday: an opinion poll in the temples of the Eastern Vicariate of Moscow» (2016) to determine the parameters of participation/non-participation in pre-Easter culinary household rites, such as the preparation and the blessing of the colored eggs and Easter cakes, and in various church pre-Easter activities (fasting, regular church attendance, confession, communion, etc.).Conceptualization of the results of the analysis allowed to propose a typology of the Orthodox Christians involving six types: «celebrating church-goers», «non-celebrating church-goers», «Orthodox Christians without confession and communion», «celebrating non-religious people», «Easter cakers», and «weakly-involved people».